pauldraws Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 Hi, I use Affinity photo to draw my comics line art with the brush tool as well as color my comics. Occasionally I'll need to copy and paste some line art to avoid drawing it multiple times. However when I do this, each time I paste the copied image the pasted result becomes more and more blurry each time. Why is this happening? will this be fixed in the next version update? (This also happens sometimes when I try to rotate my line art.) P.S. I use photo persona for all my drawing. Thanks! Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pšenda Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 Just for these reasons there is a vector drawing. Quote Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301 Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155. Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155. Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 If you are using Affinity Photo's Paint Brush Tool, you are creating raster images. Rasterized layers (those identified with the "(Pixel)" suffix in the Layers panel) cannot be resized, stretched or shrunk, skewed, or rotated by other than 90° increments without becoming blurrier than the original. That is because in raster images everything is mapped onto a grid of pixels, each of which must be completely filled with exactly one color. When any of the above transforms are applied, the pixels of the original image no longer can be perfectly mapped to whole pixels, so to avoid the stair-stepped effect informally known as "jaggies," anti-aliasing is applied to give the appearance of smooth edges at the expense of increased blurriness. As @Pšenda mentioned, drawing with vector shapes avoids this issue because vector shapes are defined geometrically, independently of how many pixels they fully or partially fill. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauldraws Posted June 17, 2019 Author Share Posted June 17, 2019 On 5/7/2019 at 6:11 PM, R C-R said: If you are using Affinity Photo's Paint Brush Tool, you are creating raster images. Rasterized layers (those identified with the "(Pixel)" suffix in the Layers panel) cannot be resized, stretched or shrunk, skewed, or rotated by other than 90° increments without becoming blurrier than the original. That is because in raster images everything is mapped onto a grid of pixels, each of which must be completely filled with exactly one color. When any of the above transforms are applied, the pixels of the original image no longer can be perfectly mapped to whole pixels, so to avoid the stair-stepped effect informally known as "jaggies," anti-aliasing is applied to give the appearance of smooth edges at the expense of increased blurriness. As @Pšenda mentioned, drawing with vector shapes avoids this issue because vector shapes are defined geometrically, independently of how many pixels they fully or partially fill. I know what a raster image is, and I know I cannot resize it without losing quality. That's not the problem. The problem is with copy and paste. When I copy a raster image drawn with the brush tool, and then paste it, the pasted image is blurry. This is a problem with the software, because it doesn't happen with any other program (Photoshop, Clip Studio) that I use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 8 minutes ago, pauldraws said: The problem is with copy and paste. When I copy a raster image drawn with the brush tool, and then paste it, the pasted image is blurry. I think what is happening is the pasting is putting the copy on a fractional pixel location and that is causing the 'blurring'. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauldraws Posted June 17, 2019 Author Share Posted June 17, 2019 3 minutes ago, Old Bruce said: I think what is happening is the pasting is putting the copy on a fractional pixel location and that is causing the 'blurring'. Thanks, do you know how this can be solved? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 On the Toolbar are a couple of buttons, Force Pixel Alignment and Move By Whole Pixels. The former (far left) will probably do what you want when it is on/pressed. pauldraws 1 Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauldraws Posted June 17, 2019 Author Share Posted June 17, 2019 Thank you! That's exactly what I needed. Now I can copy and paste without losing quality. Thanks a ton! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fluxpunk Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 I would like to verify this bug. I am working on a pixel art project and I've used many different raster art editing tools without ever seeing this issue. If you COPY pixels then PASTE them they become blurry, as if a filter is being added to them. In the example below I've copied a 64x64 block of pixels at 72dpi and pasted them into a 64x64 72dpi image and it has been blurred. This does not occur in other software, like the FREE editor GIMP. This makes Affinity Photo a horrible tool for artists, especially game artists as we need complete control over every pixel. This is frustrating as it looks like I should have stuck with GIMP rather than re-purchasing Affinity Photo for Mac. The response that the VECTOR tool Affinity Designer is the tool for RASTER PIXEL ART is disheartening. I own Photo and Designer on Windows and grudgingly re-purchased Photo for MAC, just to discover I should have downloaded the free tool GIMP instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 This is because the pasted pixels aren't on the pixel grid. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horseflesh Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 @GameDevJoe are your snapping options set like this? If that doesn't do it, I am sure there is some way to get the desired behavior. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 But Move by whole pixels is part of the problem, a pixel placed at x = 1.543 and moved by 10 whole pixels is going to be at 11.543 pixels. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fluxpunk Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 Thanks for the responses! This was confusing for me. I certainly had those settings selected and also tried the Pixel Work preset, however when pasted the pixels were not automatically aligned to the grid. This caused the blurring, which I assumed to be resampling of my pixels during the cop/paste process. Manually dragging the image until it snapped to the pixels fixed this for me. Thanks everyone! Maybe I can avoid suffering GIMP's interface after all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fluxpunk Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 6 minutes ago, Old Bruce said: But Move by whole pixels is part of the problem, a pixel placed at x = 1.543 and moved by 10 whole pixels is going to be at 11.543 pixels. Yes! This initially stumped me as well. Once the image is pasted off the grid it will remain off the grid when you drag it if moving only by whole pixels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horseflesh Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 Looks like the required settings are in a provided preset! I looked under that menu and found "Pixel work." Too bad it won't automatically snap to the grid on paste, the dragging step is not intuitive. I am not a pixel artist but knew I would get bit by this someday too. Glad there was a solution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pšenda Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 1 hour ago, Horseflesh said: Too bad it won't automatically snap to the grid Try set Screen tolerance. Quote Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301 Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155. Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155. Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 12 minutes ago, Pšenda said: Try set Screen tolerance. As mentioned in the linked topic, Screen tolerance only sets how close an object has to be (in pixels) to a snapping point before it will snap to it. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauldraws Posted May 24, 2021 Author Share Posted May 24, 2021 The "Force Pixel" alignment button was certainly the fix for me, but it's good to know there is also a preset for Pixel Work in the menu. Also, the comments about just using vector instead were super unhelpful. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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